Himalayan Dreams

Russians in India

“i’m kolya!” he exclaimed happily. When Kolya imparted this good news, my friends and I were having breakfast in a small café overlooking the Arabian Sea in Arambol, in the Indian state of Goa. Kolya was holding a surfboard and appeared completely unfazed by the fact that just a moment before we had been strangers. He was ready to share his greatest treasure, the secret of his joy. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” he told us. “But it’s okay, I’m coming back, for good.”

We were happy for Kolya. He reminded us of all the other Kolyas (and Petyas and Sashas and their female counterparts) who had followed the same path: they came to India “to have a look,” and fell in love forever. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I, too, am one of them. For two years now I’ve been coming to this mystical land, first for three months at a time, then for six.

I used to be surprised by café menus that featured Russian translations, but now I understand that Indians have long since treated Russians like family. We say, in our broken English, “Hello, my friend,” and they answer in their broken Russian, “privyet, kak dela?” We communicate in some instinctive language, which requires absolutely no knowledge of proper English – assuming, of course, that you have no intention of studying or working here.

In fact, sometimes, my correct English confuses the locals and interferes with their understanding. Suppose I asked, “Excuse me, can you please tell me how I can get to the German Bakery?” They would just shake their heads and smile, because the correct Indian-English question should have been “German Bakery – where?” In time, this “language barrier” disappeared, and I learned to communicate with the locals in their language, without losing my proper English. All I can say is this (paraphrasing Fyodor Tyutchev): India cannot be understood with the mind alone. Many Russians felt this immediately, since Russia, too, cannot be understood using logic, and, to continue the quote, “no ordinary yardstick can measure her greatness.”

I wanted to share a bit about this love that Russians have for India, a love that is at times inexplicable, at times contradictory, but almost always unconditional, one that perseveres despite everything. And not just in Goa. Having traveled around India and settled for a while in Pune (Maharashtra, central India), I have become convinced that Russians are known and loved throughout the country.

So where does this connection come from? And how far back does it go?

A Country of Dreams?

The story of India and Trishula Dev Bhakti Giri, formerly known as Maxim Stanislavovich Knyazkov-Chernobay, began in 1999, when Maxim became a Krishnaite and, as he tells it, his life changed for the better.

“It was an unforgettable experience, a wonderful group of people, a great atmosphere. I really connected with the philosophy and, therefore, with India,” recalled Trishula, who was vacationing in Bali. “Then I went to live in the temple of Hare Krishna in Almaty. Everything was going great, going smoothly, and then one fine day in 2005, someone in the temple said to me, ‘Hey, let’s go to India. There’s this person there, Karuna, he’s been living in paradise for seven years.’ We packed quickly, sold my car, and took off.”

Trishula’s first impression when he saw the capital city of Delhi was shock. There, “everything was not like it was in Russia.” Nonetheless, he said that he felt great there, from the very first day.

“We arrived in Gokarna, where we were greeted by an islander in dreadlocks, half-naked, eyes blazing, living carefree from one moment to the next. I started to absorb his mindset… Eight months later we went up into the Himalayas, finally stopping in the village of Khati. There was nothing, and no one, further up. I fell in love with the place, and within five years I hatched an idea to build a retreat there. Then, all of a sudden, a woman, Alexandra Bocharova, came into my life. She donated $100,000 for the retreat’s development, and construction began. It was a difficult process, because of the mountainous terrain, the rains, not to mention the lack of roads or electricity. For all our efforts, we never finished it, because the money ran out, funding dried up, and now everything is up in the air. We have material to build a house of about 800 square meters. We have a foundation. We have everything except the money we need to finish.”

Trishula’s story also had its share of tragedy. The partner with whom he was constructing the retreat fell into the Ganges with his fiancée Alyona. The partner was saved, but nothing could be done for Alyona. Nine days later, her body was found by a nearby ashram. She was cremated, and her ashes were dispersed over the Ganges. After that experience, Trishula’s partner “fell out of love” with India, abandoned the idea of the retreat, and returned to Russia. Alexandra, the main investor, also had a change of heart, abandoned her investment, and took up other business projects. Trishula was left all alone.

“I have not left India, nor will I,” he said. “This is the only country where I feel free. I am now in Bali, where everything is great, comfortable, gorgeous, but my heart is in India. I don’t know why. There are a lot of downsides – the noise, the clingy Indians, the trash, the dust – but my heart is still there. What I’ve seen is that just by being there, you start to exercise spiritually. And it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, how you relax, how you work – it happens automatically. I won’t leave India.”

Goa, India. You know there are a lot of Russians when restaurant menus and signs start showing up in Cyrillic.

Trishula now lives in Gokarna, calling it his “mother” and saying its energy feels soft. He’s in the real estate business, renting out spaces in Gokarna’s eco community, which is located 20 kilometers away in a coconut grove, where bamboo houses are surrounded by 300 palm trees. Trishula says that it’s easy to do business in India, “so long as you follow the law to the letter and don’t give in to the locals’ kindness and simplicity.” And he never forgets about his retreat up in the Himalayas, holding out hope that someone will take an interest in the project. “For Alexandra, for Alyona, for my partner Aniruthi, I definitely have to finish it,” he said.

In Russia, Emilia Vakhitova worked as a secretary in a St. Petersburg construction firm and attended evening music classes at a local university. Then she happened across a book on downshifting, and everything changed. Her desire to follow through grew exponentially and was finally realized. First she moved to Moscow, landing a suitable job for a few months, then, finally, she set out to see the ocean, a lifelong dream. Of the two years Emilia has been traveling around Asia, many months have been spent in India.

“This was the perfect choice for downshifting,” Emilia said. “I’ve met a lot of like-minded people in India who are traveling and earning money as they go. Within a few months, my monthly income dropped to $500, and even then I was able to live in paradise. The truth is, India is a very cheap country.”

Emilia spent two months in Goa, after which she felt pulled toward change and movement. She started traveling around India and fell in love with it even more.

Downshifter Emilia Vakhitova with her Indian friends.

“The varied landscapes led me to move further and further every two weeks or so. I’ve been in the mountains, in the desert, by the ocean and on islands. I’ve learned a lot about the Indian lifestyle. I’ve fallen in love with Hinduism. I’ve wanted to buy a small house in the mountains. I’ve found the freedom that is so hard to achieve while living in Russian. In the end – no surprise here – I fell in love with a film director from Mumbai. It’s amazing! It’s the best, most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Now Emilia is in India once again, exploring a new place (Mumbai), teaching yoga, and relaxing.

Tasha Weinstein (DJ Fintushami) left for India seven years ago, leaving behind a stable job as client care manager in a Moscow advertising agency and sending her family and friends into a tizzy. The first few years she was “seasonal,” like many other expats: half the year Tasha lived in Goa, and the other half she would disappear, either to Europe or to Moscow. But, over time, Goa prevailed and became her permanent residence. She found the rainy season to be much more engaging than the tourist season, and trips to Moscow became less frequent, just “to visit Mom.” In time, she found a new career.

“Doing nothing in Goa won’t end well,” Tasha said, “but whatever you choose to do has to bring you joy. It has to be more of a hobby and less of a means to earning millions – which don’t exist here anyway.”

Tasha invested money she had earned back in Moscow, bought a giant pizza oven, and opened the first Russian bakery in Goa. With friends, she baked cakes and other goodies and delivered them to supermarkets, restaurants, and stores in northern Goa. In addition, they organized tea stands at the weekly market in Anjuna, and at several establishments in northern Goa. It was an engaging and educational experience.

Since then a lot has changed. The bakery is no more; today Tasha is involved with the music scene and is working on several projects: an underground music and art platform and a talent and event agency. In addition to everything else they do, she and Iggy (DJ Iggy aka Ignatius Camilo) are raising two boys – six-year-old Denis and three-month-old Yan, both born in India.

“Skills from my previous work did not go to waste,” Tasha said. “I’m organizing parties, booking DJs, musicians, and artists, and staying busy with our unconventional living and working arrangement, Cirrus at Anjuna. It’s a unique venue, created for music and modern art, a meeting space for people from around the world who want to share knowledge and experience and collaborate on creative projects. Almost every evening we have DJs playing vinyl while our guests sample homemade pasta prepared in clay pots over an open fire. Half of the ingredients come from our own garden, and we have tree houses set up for the guests. It’s not that easy to find us, which is by design – our guests are usually friends of friends and creative people who find out about us from someone who has been here.”

Tasha Weinstein with her son and husband.

A year ago, Tasha and some friends bought an old school bus and completely refurbished it. Their test run – a two-day trip to the Himalayas with their son and two Italian mastiffs, 2000 kilometers one way – was a success. Now that bus, with eight beds and a DJ console, is the main transportation for Vinyl Ambulance, a two-hour audiovisual show that is launching this year as a collaborative DJ project.

“The theme of reworking the old instead of buying the new is one of the main ideas that Cirrus brings to the world,” she said. “It’s important that India, and not just India, learn to recycle and upcycle. As it develops, we can’t allow India to begin producing the same amount of trash per capita as Western countries do. And in general, it’s nice to see apparently useless things get a new lease on life.”

For what it is worth, Tasha’s mother has long since stopped panicking about her daughter’s move to Goa and now visits her on the coast almost every year. Tasha still has a fondness for Moscow and still gets involved in short-term projects with former colleagues, but she said her heart feels most at home here, in Goa.

Explanations from the Past

The story would not be complete if we didn’t take a look at the past. India and Russia have been connected since ancient times, and that connection offers answers to many of our questions. It was not merely a matter of trade relationships, described back in the fifteenth century by Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin, who traveled to India and described his adventures in a travelogue titled The Journey Beyond Three Seas. Russian traveler to the East Phillip Efremov wrote of a trip to India in the eighteenth century, and the first Russian Indologist, Gerasim Lebedev (eighteenth century), was so impressed by India that he lived there for 12 years, performing as a musician and sharing music. Later he opened the first print works in Europe to use printing presses able to produce Bengali script and founded India’s first European-style national drama theater. In the early twentieth century, the first imperial Russian consulate was opened in India, which actively facilitated the developing political and economic relationship between the two countries. But was that all that brought Russia and India together?

Bal Gangadhar Tilak, originator of the polar theory (which posits that Aryans originally lived around a pre-glacial North Pole), wrote of the incredible similarity between Slavic culture and ancient Indian texts, which could be explained by the fact that the cultures either developed in parallel or copied one another. Tilak, who was born into a Brahmin family in 1856, was a member of India’s elite, educated class, valued for its knowledge of traditional customs in the Hindu religion. He published several philosophical essays commenting on the more opaque segments of the Vedas. His seminal book on the topic, The Arctic Home in the Vedas, was published in 1903 (and in Russia in 1925 and 1956). The ancient texts – the Vedas, the Rigveda, and the Shastras – sometimes describe celestial events and other natural phenomena that can only be observed far north of modern India, leading to his conclusion that perhaps the authors of these texts lived nearer to the North Pole.

The rituals and customs of the Russian and Indian peoples are also somewhat similar. According to many historical sources, they have roots in ancient Indo-Aryan traditions. For example, in describing Hindu burial rituals, Indian scholar Raj Bali Pandey mentions a bundle of reeds that “appear to serve as a boat for the deceased.” The bundle of reeds that resembles a boat is a stand-in for the boat that goes between our world and “the other world.”

Some elements of Indo-Aryan burial practices persisted until the early twentieth century in the Greben Cossacks’ Trinity Day ritual of “launching ships” on the Terek River. In his travel notes, Ahmad ibn Fadlan gave a thorough account of how the dead were laid to rest in Rus:

In the case of a poor man they build a small boat, place him inside and burn it. In the case of a rich man, they gather together his possessions and divide them into three, one third for his family, one third to use for garments, and one third with which they purchase alcohol which they drink on the day when his slave-girl kills herself and is cremated together with her master… On the day when he and the slave girl were to be burned, I came to the river where his ship was. To my surprise, it had been beached and placed on four elm supports, and around it had been placed wooden figures, like giants… Then the people came forward with sticks and firewood. Each one carried a stick the end of which he had set fire to and which he threw on top of the wood. The wood caught fire, and then the ship, the pavilion, the man, the slave-girl and all it contained. A dreadful wind arose and the flames leapt higher and blazed fiercely… A Rus told my interpreter, ‘You Arabs are a foolish lot!’ So I said, ‘Why is that?’ and he replied, ‘Because you purposely take those who are dearest to you and whom you hold in highest esteem and throw them under the earth, where they are eaten by the earth, by vermin and by worms, whereas we burn them in the fire there and then, so that they enter Paradise immediately.’ …They built something like a round hillock over the ship, which they had pulled out of the water, and placed in the middle of it a large piece of birch on which they wrote the name of the man and the name of the King of Rus. Then they left. [Translation adapted from James E. Montgomery, “Ibn Fadlan and the Russiyah.]

A key similarity between Indian and Russian culture is the presence of solar symbols decorating Slavic traditional clothing, military banners, weapons, temples, household items, and homes. The kolovrat symbol (equivalent to the Indian swastika) was a practically unique element in Slavic ornamentation and its most important one. There were about 144 variations of the symbol that carried either protective or religious symbolism. Look at just about any religious building in India and you will inevitably find solar symbols in the façades and interior decoration.

There are also striking similarities between geographic names and a general kinship between Russian and Sanskrit – which is not all that surprising, given that both are Indo-European languages – not just in the similarity of words, but in morphology, style and syntax. This speaks to a kindred mindset that may partially explain why some Russians feel so comfortable in India.

And then there is the political legacy. From the 1960s to 1980s, the USSR and US were battling for hearts and minds in the newly-independent, post-colonial states. Democratic India was not only critically situated near Communist rival China, it was also a leader in the nonaligned states movement, and thus it became a crucial target for Soviet trade and foreign aid. In fact, for much of the 1960s, India was the USSR’s largest trading partner and subsequently a huge recipient of direct foreign aid investments. Thousands of Indian students studied at Moscow’s People’s Friendship University, and numerous construction and educational aid projects emanated from the USSR to India. This trend slumped a bit with the end of the Cold War, yet over the last decade, Russian and Indian economic trade has boomed, increasing seven-fold since 2003, the same year Russia and India initiated joint, biannual military exercises. This same period has seen the rise in influence of the economic grouping known as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) – four developing economies that together represent 40 percent of the world’s population, but only 25 percent of its wealth.

Tourism has also boomed with a recent relaxation of the visa regime for Russians traveling to India: by one estimate over 150,000 Russians are visiting India each year.

What attracts Russian tourists and expats. Scenes from Goa.

When did my story with India begin? Maybe back in childhood, when I inherited my parents’ love of Indian films, which they had watched in their youth in village culture clubs. Or when, as an eight-year-old schoolgirl, I learned Indian dance to prepare for the “Miss Pearl” children’s beauty pageant. The dance teacher had a book on her shelf, a book that I was afraid to even touch, let alone hold in my hands: The Bhagavad-Gita. How did it end up in a small Soviet town in the Caucasus? I can’t explain that. Nor can I explain my reverence for it, seeing as at the time I had no idea what the Bhagavad-Gita was. Yet the Indian dance did earn me first place in the pageant.

Many years later, when I was working at a local newspaper in Kabardino-Balkaria, we often received letters from village girls, asking us to write about one Indian actor or another. And that was years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Hollywood had long since eclipsed Bollywood in the Russian movie industry.

Now, when I pass a café-bar in the Indian village of Ashvem called “Borshch,” I am no longer surprised. And the Aura gym, owned by fruitarian Maxim from St. Petersburg, seems quite familiar, appropriate, and not at all out of place. Nor does the Cuckoo Zen Garden in Kandolima, where the Taiwanese acupuncturist, Cuckoo, only needs one interpreter – a Russian one – to work with his patients. Meanwhile, I’m off to visit Arnava-Olga, a Russian from Chelyabinsk, who has been living in Pune with her Indian husband for fifteen years, operating a healing and chiropractic clinic.

There are a lot of us here, and the pull of India truly cannot be understood by mind alone. It’s more a matter of heart: contradictory, unconditional, and in spite of everything. RL